After they returned from the States, she'd wanted it to be the night, the one where she'd felt confident enough to move forward, the one where she could take their relationship a step further.

She'd started planning it the moment they somewhat admitted to having a relationship to Seamus and Parvati during dinner.

Perhaps that had been the problem – planning. She wasn't the type of person to just jump into something without having thought it through. But as her anticipation grew, so did her anxiety, and by the time she'd finished her shower, ignored yet another owl from Ron, and made it to Draco's room, she was shaking like the last leaves remaining on the trees.

"Are you okay?" Draco asked, obviously noticing something was wrong. "Wild Horses" played ambiently on the radio behind him as he laid onto his bed and pulled her down to lie beside him, his grey eyes boring into hers. She could tell he was worried that maybe it was her own concerns about everyone knowing, but in that moment thankfully he'd chosen to believe what she'd said at the diner, that she didn't care what her friends thought. And instead, he made her feel better by simply lightening the mood.

"Is it us? Is the magic gone now that everyone knows?" he asked, the glimmer of a smile playing on the sides of his lips.

She sighed deeply and feigned the saddest look she could muster. "Yes, that's it. I didn't want to say anything, but it isn't nearly as fun without the secrecy."

"Damn," he said. "I knew I should've denied it."

"We had a decent run though," she said, offering him a placating smile and a pat on his hand.

He shifted closer to her and lifted her leg over his hip. She breathed in the smell of him as he leaned in, taking her lips between his. Even after a shower, the smell of saltwater lingered on his skin, but his normal smell of clove overpowered even that. She sighed, falling into him and shedding the nerves that had plagued her since they first returned to the Willows.

When he broke their kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers, as he always did, his eyes closed and his nose a breath away from her own, and it gave her the courage she needed to say, "I wanted to sleep with you tonight."

"You sleep with me every night," he said, burying his face in her curls.

"No, I wanted to sleep with you tonight." She felt him freeze beside her for a second before pulling back to look into her eyes, his own smoldering grey with the now-familiar flecks of blue illuminated in the lamplight. "But I panicked…. I… I wanted to show you-"

"You don't owe me anything, Hermione," he said softly, kissing her again. She melted into him, forgetting the worries she'd felt before and the fear that she'd clam up if they tried to move forward.

"I know. I… I want to."

"We have all the time in the world, love," he said, and her breath caught at the word on his lips. His hand brushed across her neck, as he trailed his fingertips down her arm. It definitely wasn't the same as a declaration of his affections, but it still made her stomach do a somersault.

"How are you so perfect?" she asked before she could stop herself. What kind of man just says that? He didn't at all seem bothered at the idea that she was panicking about whether or not to sleep with him.

He laughed and rolled onto his back. He said, "I knew eventually you'd catch on," causing her to slap him playfully.

"I'm serious. I've been a nervous wreck for the last hour, and you're just so nonchalant about everything."

He sighed deeply and rolled back to face her, all humor in his face from moments before fading away, revealing the face that only she got to see – no traces of a mask or rigidity; he was laying himself bare before her, and the shift in his demeanor gave her pause as he said, "I am the most selfish person I know, and despite that, I've never once deserved the things I've been given." His gaze fell for a moment before meeting her eyes again. "I'll never deserve this, but I want to at least be a bit closer to a man who would. I'll wait however long you need."

She knew then that she was ready, ready to share herself, not just with him in that manner, but her memories with the group as well. She wanted to take control of everything that had happened to her throughout the war, to share it with the people who'd proven to care for her here in the same way they'd shared their past with her.

After she spoke with Alys about her wishes to share her memories with the group, she said, "When I first talked to you about sharing your story with the group, I advised you to share with someone you're close with first. Do you remember? I still stand by that, but I'd like to make a suggestion."

Hermione nodded for her to continue; her stomach was already in knots at the knowledge that everyone would soon know the very depths of her trauma, but the idea that she'd need to actually verbalize that with someone first seemed almost even more frightening.

"I overheard last night that you and Draco have," Alys paused, as if looking for the right words, "gotten closer. Perhaps you should share your story with him. If it's a relationship you intend on furthering after your time here is over, perhaps you could use this as a chance to start forging that trust with one another. Also, if he's a prominent figure in your own memories as he has been in so many of the others', I think it may be a good idea to give him the opportunity to hear it from you beforehand rather than just experience it in the pensieve."

Honestly, as terrifying as that sounded, she had a point. Hermione remembered back to each time she'd seen Draco in someone else's memories – Luna's, both when she was kidnapped at King's Cross and multiple times in his Manor, in Nicola's being forced to torture his fiancé, and Seamus', though blessedly in the two he was featured in, he was never actually forced to participate. In both Luna's and Seamus' memories, the real Draco had traveled inside the pensieve with the others, and each time he'd appeared visibly shaken. If he'd been warned beforehand by either of them, Draco had never mentioned it to her. She definitely didn't want to force that on him without at least telling him first.

Speaking to him about her torture at the hands of Bellatrix had revealed what she'd already suspected – it was just as traumatic for him being forced to watch as it had been for her to experience it. She didn't want to make him go through that again without at least giving him forewarning of what he'd be seeing. It was with that in mind that, despite her inability to calm her racing heart or the slight shaking in her hands for almost the entire day, she resolved herself to share her story with Draco.

"So, yeah," Dennis said, fumbling over his words a bit as he shared his own story of what brought him to The Willows. He sat, his back upright and leaning forward slightly onto his outstretched arms, the whites of his knuckles showing as he gripped the edges of his chair tightly. "I feel like I don't really have the right to be here, sharing my story with all of you who've clearly been through a lot more than I have, but I really didn't have anywhere else to go."

He swallowed thickly, looking more uncomfortable than Hermione had ever seen him. Dennis was typically the picture of relaxation, and just as Draco had commented weeks ago, he was one of the happiest and carefree people she'd ever met. Yet, here he was, sharing the story of his brother's death after they'd been fighting alongside one another, both clearly too young to be there. He'd confessed that other than nightmares he couldn't seem to shake about the battle itself, he had no lingering effects of the war.

"When I ran into Susan at the Leaky a while back, she brought up what she wanted to do here, and I asked to join in, on a whim really. I… I didn't realize I was depressed until I started thinking about how much time I spent alone. I never went back to Hogwarts, and I didn't really see anyone from school anymore. I thought maybe this would help, you know. Being here around people I knew, but I always feel like I shouldn't be here, like I don't deserve it somehow."

When Dennis looked up finally, his eyes falling on Walt's, he took it as a sign that Dennis was done. "Dennis, before I comment on anything else you said, I want to show you something that you may not be aware of." Walt removed his glasses and looked around the room at the others. "How many of you have ever felt that you don't deserve to be here?"

Without hesitation, Hermione put her hand in the air and looked around at everyone else, each of their hands in the air just like hers; even Alys and Susan had their hands raised.

"Hermione," Walt said, "Why don't you belong here?"

She hadn't been prepared to actually be called out, and she wasn't entirely sure how to verbalize all the ways she felt undeserving. "Well, I… I feel like in a lot of ways I didn't go through as much as others did, not enough to suffer the way I do now. Like, it's all my own weakness rather than what I went through in the war."

Walt nodded thoughtfully and turned to Seamus. "What about you, Seamus? Why don't you deserve to be here?"

Seamus' eyes turned to Walt's quickly, as if he hadn't been expecting to go next. "I'm only here so that I can fight again. I don't… Well, I didn't think I actually needed it. So, when everyone started talking about their reasons for being here, it made me think I didn't have a right to be here listening to it all."

"Nicola?" Walt asked.

"You're all young enough to be my children," she said, shaking her head slightly. "I've thought that I didn't fit in exactly or that my age meant that I should be able to cope on my own."

Walt turned toward Parvati expectantly and nodded toward her.

"The same as Hermione said. I've thought that I haven't been through nearly enough." Parvati shrugged and gave Dennis a half-smile.

"Draco?"

He never looked up from whatever place on the floor held his attention. Those same worry lines that Hermione had picked on him about weeks ago appeared around his eyes and in his brow. He hesitated for a moment before sniffing once and saying, "I had a hand in putting you all here." His words were flat, monotonous, lacking all of the timbre and personality that Hermione had come to love so much, and it hurt to hear him confess this, to hear how much he blamed himself.

The fact-like quality of his statement wasn't lost on her either. All the rest of them had expressed their feelings or their thoughts on why they didn't belong. Draco didn't say that. He simply stated what was true to him and what he thought was a fact to everyone else as well.

But it wasn't Draco's memories they were discussing, it was Dennis', so Walt simply offered Draco a tight smile before turning back to Dennis.

"Imposter syndrome, Dennis. We all have it, even myself, Alys, and Susan. It's typically used to describe the feeling of being a fraud in relation to your own abilities, but it definitely applies in this setting as well. There's no threshold for trauma, no bar that says you have to gone through this much to get in. The proof that you deserve to be here is that every last one of us has felt the same way," Walt said, moving his hand in a circle to indicate all of those sitting around them.

Dennis chuckled humorlessly and said, "I guess I never thought about it like that."

"Do you feel like being here has helped you at all?"

"Oh, for sure. My nightmares are basically nonexistent now, and I… I feel like a part of something again," Dennis said with a shrug and then added hastily, "Oh, and I got Tari's number, so there's that."

Walt closed his eyes and shook his head, but the smile on his face said he was just as humored as the rest of them.

After changing into her pyjamas, she went to Draco's room, like she did every night, but one difference between this night and every other was that she walked those ten steps that separated his door from hers on shaky legs, her heart hammering against her chest like the banging of a drum.

When she let herself in, Draco was already sitting on his bed, hair damp from a recent shower and his back propped up against the headboard. He looked up as she came in, and the half grin he gave her was enough to calm the storm in her stomach and quell the shaking of her hands.

"Hi," he said, dropping his book into his lap, his finger holding his place between the pages.

"Hi." She took a seat across from him on the bed and leaned down to kiss him. They may have admitted to a relationship in front of the others here at The Willows, but they still didn't spend much time alone with one another during the days, which just made their time together every night that much more special. And by the end of each day, all she wanted to do was touch him.

Breaking the kiss, she leaned back toward the foot of the bed again and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her strangely, grey eyes searching her face. She realized a moment too late that to him, it probably looked like one of those "we need to talk" situations, so she smiled, trying to ease his mind a bit.

"I… I'm going to share my memories at group tomorrow night, and I wanted to talk to you about it first, so nothing would be a surprise for you."

His face seemed to relax, so she continued. "You said tonight that you were a part of why everyone else was here, and I don't want you to think that about me. You haven't added to my problems, Draco, you've… you've helped me overcome them. The last thing I want is for you to see yourself in mine too and feel somehow responsible for it." She knew him well enough to know that she could say that all she wanted, but he likely wouldn't change his mind. At least not at first. "I'm sharing what happened at your home because of Bellatrix; you just happen to be there."

She expected him to cut in, to take the blame. They'd talked about what happened at his home before, and she hated that he continued to carry that guilt no matter what she said. Thankfully, though, he remained silent, looking at her thoughtfully, and a little bit apprehensive. His eyes never left hers, but she could tell he was anxious by his thumb and middle finger twirled the signet ring around his pinky.

"And, I," she sighed again, her eyes fluttering closed for a beat, before she said, "I didn't want you to see it all for the first time while everyone else is watching. I'm not sure if that will help it be less of a shock for you, but –"

"Granger," he cut in finally, and the look on his face confused her. His brows drew together in irritation as he said, "You're sharing your memories, and you're worried about how it will affect me."

"Are you really surprised by that? When I have to actually see someone hurting you, it's going to kill me," she said, and the cross look on his face evaporated. He did look surprised by that statement at least, as if he couldn't believe that she'd care that much for him.

The look evaporated quickly. "Well, I'm certainly not saying I'm going to enjoy it, but I don't want you to be thinking about me. This is about you."

"Will you just shut up and look in my head?"

He flinched back and blinked at her. "What?"

She pulled a small bottle of pink potion from her pocket and enlarged it to its normal size. "I got this from Alys. I don't want to do anything that you aren't comfortable with, but I'd like for you to use Legilimency… if you're okay with that."

Draco's mouth fell open slightly. This wasn't something people did. They didn't ask someone to go inside their head, to invade their mind. Even giving someone access to very specific memories in a pensieve was a rare occurrence and even that wasn't as invasive; this was laying yourself completely at the mercy of another person.

"Why didn't we just use the pensieve?"

"I trust you," she said without hesitation. She extended her wand out to him, but he only looked down at it briefly before looking back up at her face. "If you don't want to, I'm not going to push it, Draco. If you'd rather see them tomorrow with everyone else so that you only have to see it once, I understand."

He closed his eyes briefly, wincing, and said, "I see it every day." He opened his eyes, but his pained expression remained.

She reached across the bed with her free hand and laid it across his arm. She leaned into him, planting a soft kiss to his lips and pulling him out of his own memories. He drew a heavy breath and nodded once before tentatively taking Hermione's wand. The look on his face was one of determination, but there was no denying the wariness in his eyes.

He uncorked the potion, swallowing it down in one gulp and licking his lips afterward.

"Are you sure about this?"

She leaned across the bed to kiss him again, much deeper than the last, and took his face in her hands, feeling his stubble beneath her fingers. Laying her forehead against his, she said, "I'm sure."

He nodded, and she leaned back, breathing deeply and preparing herself. As far as she knew, the only time anyone had performed Legilimency on her was when he'd tried to force happy memories into her mind as Bellatrix tortured her, and she wasn't entirely sure what to expect. The apprehension must've shown on her face, because he gave her a half-smile and said, "It won't hurt. Just relax."

She swallowed and watched as he did too, clearly as nervous as she was. Lifting his wand tentatively, he said, "Legilimens."